Six Four (7 page)

Someone pressing random numbers had got through on a fluke. Emboldened after hearing a woman’s voice, they had dialled a second, then a third time. That was, of course, possible. And there were a number of officers in the force who knew his number – after twenty-eight years of service, it was easy enough to imagine two or three who might bear him a grudge. Still . . . what was the point in lining up possibilities?
Ayumi had made the call
. He believed it. Insisted on it. They had no other palpable means, as parents, of clinging to the hope that their daughter was alive. Ayumi had called. She had survived for two months. She was alive now, after three. It was all they could hope for.

Mikami entered the station grounds through the back gate. It had been on his mind the whole month: her hesitation, the three calls. Had Ayumi been trying to tell them something? Or, perhaps, instead of wanting to say something, had she simply wanted to hear her parents’ voices? She had called twice, but Minako had answered both times. So she’d tried a third time. Because she’d wanted to hear her father’s voice, too.

Occasionally, the thought would come. That Ayumi had wanted to talk to him and not Minako. He’d finally answered on her third attempt. She had tried to speak, but the words hadn’t come. She’d wanted him to know. So she’d uttered the phrase in her heart.
I’m sorry. I accept my face as it is.

Mikami felt a sudden attack of dizziness. It hit him the moment he was through the staff entrance leading to the main building.
Shit, not again.
His vision blackened even as he cursed, his sense of balance deserting him.
Crouch!
His brain issued the command but his hands stubbornly reached for support. He felt the cold surface of a wall. This being his only guide, he waited. Eventually his vision began to creep back. Brightness. Strip lighting. Grey walls. He recoiled from a full-length mirror fitted into one of the walls. He saw the image of himself, his shoulders heaving with each breath. His slanted eyes. His thick nose. His harsh cheekbones. His look was that of an exposed rock face.

Shrill laughter piped up from behind. Someone was mocking him – that was his first thought.

He held his breath and glared into the mirror: a couple of beaming faces passed by. The image was of two women officers from Transport, playing with a training dummy as they walked by.

Mikami washed his face in the bathroom. The sweat on his hands was oily enough to repel the water. He dried himself without looking in the mirror then returned to Media Relations. Suwa and Kuramae were sitting on a couch, heads together in conversation. He had expected them to be ensconced in the Press Room, checking on the state of the reporters – why were they back in the office together?

‘Something happen?’ The words sounded sharper than he had intended.

Suwa stood. He looked crushed, as though his earlier enthusiasm had been a figment of the imagination. Kuramae drifted back to his desk with hunched shoulders.

Suwa’s voice was a whisper. ‘Sir, I’m sorry. They booted us out.’

‘They kicked you out?’

‘Yes . . . I don’t know what to say.’

It felt like a significant blow. Mikami accepted that the Press Room granted its occupants a certain amount of independence. It was also true, however, that the room was on loan from the police, to assist the press in their reporting. It was disquieting to see that they were willing to shut the police – their landlords – out.

‘That bad?’

‘There’s definitely something happening in there.’

‘You think the
Toyo
’s behind it?’

‘I do. They’re stirring things up, trying to get the others worked up.’

A picture of Akikawa’s expression came into Mikami’s mind.
Meaning you, the police, have no trust in us whatsoever. Yes?
The words had been cutting.

‘Is there anything you can do?’

‘Oh definitely . . . I’m sure I can defuse the situation. It’s just that I’m not sure we’ll be able to do it straight away.’

Suwa’s answer lacked confidence. And he didn’t seem to be playing it down for effect. Perhaps the issue was serious enough to make even someone as experienced as Suwa feel out of their depth. Mikami sat at his desk. He lit a cigarette and pulled his notebook from his pocket.

‘The commissioner’s going to pay us a visit.’

‘Sir?’

Suwa’s eyes widened. Kuramae and Mikumo stopped what they were doing and looked up, too.

‘It’s an inspection. He’s going to visit the crime scene of Shoko’s kidnapping, also the family home.’

‘When?’

‘This time next week.’

‘Next week?’ Suwa yelped. After a moment he let out a breath and spoke again. ‘Well, the timing’s particularly bad.’

‘For now, if you could just let the press know,’ Mikami said, leafing through his notebook. He got Suwa to take a copy of the commissioner’s schedule.

‘We have ten minutes for the walking interview. That’s time for three, maybe four questions?’

‘Sounds about right.’

‘How do the press decide on their questions?’

‘They usually each come up with one, then that month’s representative compiles the final list. Most of the time they all ask the same sorts of thing.’

Mikami nodded. ‘If you tell them now, when do you think you can get them to submit their questions?’

‘That would be . . .’ Suwa’s words trailed off. Mikami couldn’t blame him. It was only moments earlier that the press had unceremoniously booted him out of their room.

‘Just tell them I’ll need them first thing next week. The executives want a chance to vet them.’

‘Sure. I’ll give it a go.’ He said it with a look of being imposed upon, but followed this with a few quick nods for Mikami’s sake.

It’ll be fine
. Mikami forced himself to feel optimistic. The commissioner general inspecting an unsolved kidnapping: he was sure it would be news enough for them all. They would fall into line. All they needed to do was agree a ceasefire on the issue of anonymous reporting. That would be easy enough. Suwa was partway back to his desk when he did an about turn. He cocked his head to one side.

‘I wonder, though . . . why would he be looking into Six Four at this point?’

Six Four.
It disturbed Mikami to hear the phrase uttered again, although less so than when it had come from Akama’s mouth.

‘It’s PR, for Criminal Investigations,’ Mikami said dismissively, getting to his feet.

Fourteen years since the kidnapping. The term no longer seemed to be the sole possession of the detectives who had worked on the case. Even so, it had made him wary to hear two people, both outsiders to the investigation, deploy the prestigious code name so soon after each other. He’d had the same thought in Akama’s office: that information from Media Relations was leaking to Akama. That it had been doing so consistently, since the first day of his appointment.

He spoke without looking at Suwa. ‘Right, I’ll need you to sort things with the press. I’m going out for a while.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘Shoko’s parents’ house. I need to arrange things for the visit.’ Mikami glanced at Kuramae. ‘Can you come?’

He didn’t make a habit of asking his staff to drive him around, but his attacks of dizziness were worrying him. Today wasn’t the first time it had happened. He’d been suffering them for close to two weeks.

‘Ah, actually, I have to go out to interview the railway division; the police brought in a group causing trouble on the trains.’

While he excused himself Mikumo craned her head upwards from behind, as though to advertise her presence.
Not you –
Mikami swallowed the words rising in his throat. In terms of enthusiasm for her work, Mikumo was many times Kuramae’s superior. She had also come up through Transport, meaning she could drive a minibus in her sleep.

Clouds of dust blew through the air outside. As soon as he and Mikumo stepped out of the main building, she raised a hand to her forehead and dashed off into the wind, aiming for the parking area. Within a minute, the press director’s car appeared, pulling confidently around to stop alongside the entrance.

‘Do you know the address?’ Mikami asked, getting into the passenger-side seat.

‘Of course, sir,’ she said without pause, already navigating forwards.

Mikami supposed he’d been thoughtless to ask. Anyone who worked at the Prefectural HQ but didn’t know the address was, it felt fair to say, a fraud. It was Mikumo’s youth that had caught him off guard. She had just turned twenty-three; she would have been nine at the time of the kidnapping, only a couple of years older than the murdered girl. Now she was driving him to that girl’s home. There was no escaping the fact that an unimaginable span of time had passed.

They stopped not long after leaving the station to buy a gift of rice crackers. The national highway was quiet. The rows of buildings disappeared after they turned right at the junction to the
prefectural road, where even the road-side stores began to taper off. Now they were approaching what had, before the city’s expansion, been the old Morikawa district.

‘Um, sir . . .’ Mikumo said, keeping her eyes ahead.

‘Yes? What is it?’

‘It was a great relief . . . that it wasn’t your daughter.’ She was talking about the day before. ‘I know they’ll find her. I’m sure of it.’

Her voice sounded nasal. She looked ready to cry. It was at times like this that Mikami always struggled to find a way to respond.
Just . . . leave it be
. That was as close as he could get to what he really felt. Strict rules were in place to guard the privacy of police officers and their families. Yet this was only the case with regard to those outside the force; within it, stories spread in the blink of an eye. Colleagues would approach with no warning and ask after Ayumi. They did it out of kindness. It was because they were concerned. But no matter how often Mikami reminded himself of this, he was still unable to feel genuine gratitude. Akama’s motivations were clearly different, and there were many more who shared his philosophy. Despite the fact that they hardly knew Mikami, these people would assume a concerned expression and worm their way over as soon as they caught sight of him. Some actually seemed pleased, as if Mikami’s distress gave them an opportunity to either mend fences, or angle for something in return. These were the ones who were the most likely to voice what seemed like genuine, heartfelt compassion. They would look on, smug, as Mikami bowed and offered thanks. He felt a growing aversion to other people. It scared him. He’d had enough of it.

Still . . .

‘Thank you,’ he said.

It went without saying that the young female officer sitting next to him was one of the few who did actually merit his trust.

‘Oh, you needn’t . . .’

She blushed and straightened her back. She was almost
worryingly good-natured. Given that she had chosen to become a police officer, she was already likely to be more straight-laced and diligent than the average person; even with that, Mikami knew she was special. She had grown up in a world where morality, sex and even the values of basic human kindness were in chaos; despite this, nothing about her suggested even the slightest pollution. She was beautiful and innocent. In a way, she reminded him of Minako when she was younger. It was only natural that the majority of single officers were infatuated with her; even in the Press Room, more than a few of the reporters had designs on taking her back to Tokyo with them. Suwa had already mentioned that Akikawa was one of them. It was the main reason Mikami still refused to let her be directly involved with them.

The landscape rolling ahead was rural with a smattering of private houses: the western limits of City D. After a while, the giant pickle factory – almost the size of a leisure centre – came into view, looming over the riverbank marking the boundary of the next village. The house appeared next, still on the factory grounds, a traditional Japanese structure with a tiled roof.
Amamiya Pickles.
The idea of pickling aubergines and cucumbers in small tubs and selling them had been a success, and the business had grown rapidly. The factory had regularly featured in the news; in hindsight, it was likely that it was this success which had caught the attention of the kidnapper.

Mikami gestured for Mikumo to pull over, getting her to park in an empty plot of land a short distance from the family home.

‘Wait here.’

It felt insensitive to leave her to sit with the girl’s parents. If none of this had ever happened, Shoko Amamiya would now be a young woman of roughly Mikumo’s age.

Mikami got out of the car and walked resolutely down the narrow road – back then, an unsurfaced path – leading to the building.

We’ll bring the bastard in . . .

Mikami recalled the day he had first entered the house, the burning heat in his chest. Fourteen years had gone by. He had certainly never imagined that his next visit would be to arrange a PR exercise. Whatever the purpose, the visit brought very mixed feelings. Each time he blinked he saw Ayumi. It was going to be difficult to stay businesslike, meeting parents who had already lost their daughter. He straightened the front of his jacket and gazed, without pressing it straight away, at the buzzer marked ‘Amamiya’.

The heater, having just been turned on, started to click as a warm stream of air flowed into the room.

‘It’s been a long time.’

Mikami declined the offer of a floor cushion and placed both hands on the tatami before him. Keeping his head low, he slid the box of rice crackers over. Yoshio Amamiya only nodded faintly.

While the walls had darkened a little, the layout and furniture of the living room he’d been shown into seemed unchanged. Amamiya’s transformation, on the other hand, had been dramatic and far surpassed that of fourteen years. Fifty-four. It didn’t seem possible. His hair had turned white and been left to grow. His skin was pale, leaden. His cheeks were morbidly thin and a mass of wrinkles clustered like knife cuts around his eyes and forehead. It was the face of a man whose daughter had been murdered. A face ravaged by grief and suffering – that was the only way Mikami could describe it.